I started converting my digital8 material to DVD recently.

I converted a first tape no problem. On the second tape, there is an obvious video and sound stutter during playback. This is not PC related as I'm trying to playback the tape in the camcorder alone. I thought it might be a bad tape but all other tapes I have tried stutter including the first one that I converted successfuly to DVD last week.

I'm thinking that the problem might be dirty tape heads on my 1999 Sony TRV203. They were never cleaned (about 20 recorder tapes).

Could anyone confirm this or bring forward another explanation?

Thanks in advance.